Sunday, June 28, 2015

The Charter Life

 from the May 2017 issue of Charter & Choice Journal

by Macon S. Uppton

Charles T. McSwagg arrived late to the interview, pulling up thirty minutes after our appointment in a shiny new Mercedes.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, getting out of the car. "The Bentley was almost out of gas."

This kind of bold problem solving is a good example of McSwagg's bold approach to the Charter-choice lifetsyle. He explained further over twelve cups of coffee. "I want access to an excellent automobile with a full tank of gas. The Mercedes was almost out of gas, so the only solution was to look at some choices of other excellent cars that had full tanks of gas." And then he went back to testing the twelve cups of coffee.

I might have raised my eyebrows.

"I like just the right balance of sweetener and cream in my coffee," he said. "So I have them bring me several different combinations so that I have access to the excellent cup of coffee that I'm looking for."

I asked if that wasn't rather expensive. He shrugged. "We make compromises," he said, and I looked closer to see that each of the cups only held a small amount of coffee. McSwagg selected the cup he wanted, swept the rest off the side of the table and onto the floor, and as the waitress swept up after him, we began the interview.

CCJ: What led you to first adopt the charter-choice lifestyle?

M: I made a bundle investing in the charter school movement, and I found the approach of options over improvements to be a powerful one. Why should we have to fix things, or pour more money into the things we already have? Shouldn't we instead just have access to a variety of better options? Wouldn't that be a great way to approach life?

CCJ: So, how many homes do you currently own?

M: I think I'm up to ten. Of course, I've moved out of several of them. My first home had carpet that wore out and, after a bad windstorm, there was serious roof damage. So of course my only option at that point was to move into another home.

CCJ: Isn't that a waste of the home?

M: My first wife lives there now. I think she's comfortable as long as she stays in the front parlor and on the first floor.

CCJ: Your first wife...

M: Yes, my first wife and I had some conflicts and disagreements about how to manage the house; thank goodness I had access to many excellent alternative wives and was able to move on.

CCJ: Did you consider repairs for the home, or counseling for your marriage? If there were problems that could be solved with time and work--

M: Well, that would just be making excuses. There's no reason the house couldn't be excellent and my first wife couldn't be excellent. But they weren't. I just wanted access to other excellent options.

CCJ: So how many wives--

M: Well, my second wife was injured in a car accident, and my third just started to really show her age. I'm grateful that I had access to those other excellent options.

CCJ: But couldn't you just--

M: There's just no point in trying to fix things when you can have other, better things, instead. Leave the things that need fixing for other people. Poorer people.

CCJ: Don't some of your wives, or, um, optional possible wives, find this system sort of... of-putting?

M: Well, now you sound like several of my children. But as I've explained to them, if a relationship isn't serving my needs right now, today, then I see no reason to invest more time and effort in it. And time is limited. If I spent five minutes a day with each of my children, I'd never get anything else done. But I do want access to the option to have excellent children, so I have several on stand-by.

CCJ: Children?

M: Why ground them when you can just replace them?

CCJ: Why try to fix it when you can just replace it?

M: Exactly. Now we can-- oh, bother.

CCJ: Did you just spill some of that coffee on your pants?

M: I did. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to cut this short. I need to go buy a new outfit.


  1. Here is a different charter school life style:

    1. TE, this charter school sounds fantastic, and especially suited to its community. This is the type of charter school that was meant to happen when the idea was first started (by union leader Albert Shanker, I believe.) And Peter's never been against this type of charter school, only the for-profit chains or non-profits that offer nothing innovative and only exist for the purpose of making the CEO rich.

    2. I think it is an excellent school.

      I am curious, what percentage of the 6,100 (2012-2013 NCES estimate, so probably lower than the current number) public charter schools are for profit or exist for the purpose of making the CEO rich?

      I look forward to Peter's posts praising those charter schools that he approves of in future posts, and perhaps even an argument about how to differentiate between good from bad charter schools.

    3. I've written posts covering those points many times (except for specific charters I like, because I don't know of any, though I have no trouble believing that they exist). But you could try this post for starters.

    4. Kinda funny that whenever you feel the need to defend charters, this seems to be the only one you can find to back yourself up.

      BTW, how much funding has the local public school lost so that these lucky few can have a great farm experience?

    5. Peter,

      You might spend some more time looking at the huge variety of charter schools in the United States. Way to many Montessori, Waldorf, and progressive charter schools to list. There are language immersion charter schools, music and the arts charter schools, project based charter schools, and rural charter schools like Waldon. There are charter schools where parents found the school boards unwilling to do magnet programs, charter schools where parents found the district too bureaucratic. There are old charter schools like the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. With over 6,000 charter schools, there is much you might like.

      As to your post, I disagree that the returns to scale in education are so large that it is inefficient to run multiple systems within a single geographic area. The most extreme example would be NYC Public. NYC public educates about a million students. If we broke up NYC public into five systems (in addition, of course, to the large private and parochial education systems that already exist in New York), EACH of those five systems would educate more students than are educated in the states of Alaska, Delaware, Washington D.C., Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, or Wyoming.

    6. I, too, would be curious to know the percentage of students in for-profit and non-profit-managed-by-for-profit charters compared to students in local, innovative/specialized charters. Although, on the other hand, I really don't care because I don't think there should be any of the former.

      Peter does talk some about good versus bad charter schools in his post from May 2015 called "I should support charter schools."

    7. Dienne,

      It is a handy one. It is difficult to list all of the individual charter schools that might be appealing to different people. Part of the point of charters is to create variety of schools. Remember the majority of charters schools are stand alone schools.

      As for the loss to the school district for Waldon, if there is one it seems of little concern to the school board as the school superintendent was the person who originally suggested that the school convert from a public school to a charter school and it is the local school board that authorized the charter.

      How much state aid did your local public school lose when you enrolled your lucky children in the private progressive school that they attend? Does it keep you up at night, or is that only a worry when it comes to other peoples children?

    8. Hmm, TE, it's odd. Y'know, I still get my property tax bill and, strangely enough, there's still a line item for paying for my local public schools. Guess the county assessor didn't get the memo that my kids go to private school. Or, maybe it's that supporting public schools is a public obligation, even if one doesn't partake of them. Your trying to equate private school (which parents pay for in addition to taxes that support public schools) with charter school (which sucks money from the public system) is risible. Thought you were an economist?

      Anyway, do please try to find some other examples to support your case. Yes, there are a lot of independent charter schools out there. Many of them are in strip malls with P.E. and recess in the parking lot. Others are church affiliated teaching God knows what manner of religious doctrine on the public dime. Others are those little mom-and-pop sorts of schools that seem to keep getting investigated for corruption. And still others are ones that find oh-so-subtle ways of attracting only the right kind of rich, white, connected people, such as only having applications available at the country club.

    9. BTW, TE, I guess you're saying that our neighbors to the north should have trouble sleeping too - their son is long grown and gone, so they send no kids to public schools. Also, the couple across the street should feel bad too - their only child is a baby and they don't send him to public school. Oh, and the old blind lady who doesn't even have kids, guess she should feel terrible!

      Do you see now how absurd your argument is TE? That people who don't send their kids to public schools are somehow depriving the public schools of money? All of those neighbors, and plenty more besides who don't utilize public schools, get the same tax bills I do, so they, like me, are supporting a public resource without directly benefiting from it. You ask how I sleep? Quite soundly, thanks for asking.

    10. Dienne,

      I am not talking about your property tax, I am talking about state aid that is typically allocated by head count to your local school district. You might want to look into this and discover how much you cost the local district.

      You actually have no idea how many independent charters there are, do you? No idea how many Montessori charters, no idea how many Waldorf charters, no idea how many progressive charters? You had no idea that it is the local school board that holds the charter on the Waldon rural charter school, right?

      Details matter. The parents who do not send their students to the local public schools are depriving the local schools of state payments, pure and simple. In Ohio, only 46.4% of K-12 revenue comes from your local taxes (that property tax bill you mentioned). The state provides for 45.4% of public K-12 revenue, most of it allocated through a formula (2010 figures, the latest I could easily find. Likely not much different now). Let me quote from the Ohio School Foundation Formula Fact Sheet from the Ohio Office of Budget and Management: "Ohio’s student centered funding formula provides resources based on a school district’s Average Daily Membership (ADM). Your decision reduced your school district's Average Daily Membership. Your decision cost your school district funds.

    11. "No idea how many Montessori charters, no idea how many Waldorf charters, no idea how many progressive charters?"

      No, despite asking you several times, you've never been able to tell me about any one other than Walton Rural Life. If there's so many great ones out there, do share! But again, as Peter points out many, many times, "rescuing" the lucky few, no matter how great the school, doesn't hold a candle to adequately funding and supporting public schools so that all kids have a great education.

      Anyway, it's a riot that you think I'm depriving a system of money that I'm paying into and not using. I guess people who choose not to have kids are depriving the system too. Don't know how anyone sleeps these days.

      As you yourself indicate, the state only pays a portion. If my kids were enrolled in public schools, the school would actually have to provide them an education. You don't think that, perhaps, them actually being in school and having to be educated costs the school more than the bonus they get from property taxes they get for kids who aren't in the school? Just what do you think would happen to schools if all the private school kids (including Catholic schools - and there's still a lot of 'em) were to enroll in public schools? You think the per student increase in state funding would make up for all of those kids being added to the rolls? Laughing. Your insistence that private schools are equal to charter schools is, again, risible.

    12. Dienne,

      Again your choice to send your children to private schools reduced the revenue that your local school received from the state.

      Lets talk about the reduced cost of educating the students that leave your local school district for charter schools. Please explain why a student leaving a traditional public school for a private school reduces the costs for the public school by more than that same student leaving a traditional public school for a charter school reduces the costs for the public school they are leaving. I would foolishly think that the reduction in cost to the school district is the same no matter the destination.

    13. You cannot be that obtuse, TE. The difference, as you perfectly well know, is that money to support charter schools comes from the same pot as money to support public schools - public money going into private hands. The money to support private schools, on the other hand, comes exclusively from the parents and private donors of that school.

      So, since not putting your children in public school deprives them of resources, I guess the problem is that people aren't having enough kids. For every child you don't have, you're depriving the public schools of money! So if every one of us popped out 6 or 8 or 10 of 'em, just think how much state funding would be rolling into public schools!

      Anyway, I'm done with your willful obtuseness on this thread. Good day.

    14. Dienne,

      Perhaps putting it in the form of a story will help make my point.

      Cathy's parents removed her from the local public school system, but did not move out of the district. The district no longer has to pay the cost of educating Cathy but her parents still pay the same property tax into the local public school system. The average district membership has dropped by one, so the state formula reduces state aid to the district.

      I think we can agree on the story so far, but here may be where we disagree. What else happens to the district if Cathy attends a private school? How is that different if Cathy attends a charter school?

    15. If Dienne sends her child to a private school, no money is taken away from state funding. If she sends her child to a charter school, money is taken from state funding, meaning the state has less to split up to schools.

    16. Rebecca,

      Dienne sending her children to a private school reduces funding to her local school district because it lowers the average district membership. The formula does not distinguish between students who leave to go to a charter school, students who leave to be home schooled, or students who leave for a charter school. The loss to the local school district is exactly the same.

    17. I don't know how this works exactly, so correct me if I'm wrong. Different states do things differently, but in Ohio 46.4% of funding comes from property tax, though that must be an average because how much it is depends on the district. I'm assuming that all of this goes directly to the school district. Then an average of 45.4% comes from the state, and I'm assuming it's allocated to offset the property taxes so that there's an average between the property taxes and state money of $10,000 per student or whatever it is, but there's only so much in the state budget from the lottery and other revenue and I don't know how that$10,000 figure is calculated for sure until they know exactly how many students are registered in each school, because there's only so much in the budget. Though as I understand it, the Ohio Supreme Court declared, like, a decade ago that Ohio's formula is not equitable, but the state keeps appealing and nothing has been done to change it.Then the other 91.8% must come from the federal government, but is that Title 1 etc. or is that separate? Then some districts have an extra tax on income besides the property tax. So when a student goes to a charter school, some of the property taxes, some of the federal aid, some of the extra tax, and some of the state money would go to the charter school. But if the student goes to a private school, none of the property tax or the income tax would go to the private school, right? So that's more that the district has. And if the student goes to a private school, that's one fewer student to go into the calculation of how many students the state has to divide up the money among, so there would be more for each student so the $10,000 or whatever figure would be higher so that would be more for the district. I don't know about the federal because I don't know what that money is for sure.

    18. Rebecca,

      The crucial thing for this discussion is that state funding automatically increases or decreases depending on the average district membership. If the average district membership goes up, state funding goes up. If the average district membership goes down, funding goes down.

      State money is not a kind of block grant, where spending per student is determined by an equation like this: (fixed amount of money - some dollar amount times the students going to charter school) divided by the number of students in the school district. The equation is actually fixed amount of money + some dollar amount times the average district membership.

      Here is another way to think about it. Two school districts with the same average wealth (Ohio does try to even out inequality in local taxes a bit) with the same number of students in district schools will get that same state funding according to the formula. It does not matter if in one district all of the students attend the traditional public schools and in the other district only half attend the local public schools and the other half attend charter schools, what matters is the actual number of students attending district schools. The formula would fund each equally.

    19. I don't understand your first formula but I guess that doesn't matter since you say it's not used. In the second formula, where does the " + some dollar amount" come from? Regardless, there's no way the loss can be the same when you have a fixed amount of money statewide designated to education and also local money..

    20. Rebecca,

      Thanks for you post. It has pointed to a misunderstanding that you have about the way education spending levels are determined in Ohio. When governments set spending by a formula, there IS NOT a fixed amount of money statewide designated for education. If there is an increase in the number of students in all Ohio districts, the total amount spent on education by the state automatically increases. If there is a decrease in the number of students in all Ohio districts, the total amount spent on education by the state automatically decreases.

    21. I don't see how they follow a budget then. If the number of students increases, where does the extra money come from?

    22. Rebecca,

      It depends on the situation. Usually the estimate of spending under the formula will be pretty close to the actual amount spent. If it is higher than planned, you might see a reduction in the state's rainy day fund (Ohio had a rainy day fund of $1.48 billion in 2013, for example. I could not find a more recent one) or they might reduce spending on some other programs. If they are lucky, the estimate of the tax revenue they would bring in might have been too low (if your school population is growing unexpectedly quickly it is likely that the states economy is also growing unexpectedly quickly), so there could be extra funds available to take care of the unanticipated high spending.

  2. Sounds sort of like "planned obsolescence".